More Precious Than Rubies

People are fascinated by jewels. Crowns and coronets are often full of precious stones set in gold and silver to make them especially valuable. Rubies often go with diamonds to give contrasting colour to the sheer brightness of the diamonds. To the writer of the book of Proverbs, precious jewels were the best way he could use to describe wisdom. Wisdom is not the same as cleverness or smartness — some very clever people may be very bad people! But the wise person is a good person. The book of Proverbs gives lots of examples of what a wise person looks like. The wise person is careful, discerning, humble and above all loves God and trusts God with his very life.

The New Testament shows us that Jesus Christ is the ideal of godly wisdom and it is from him that we receive the wisdom to love and follow God. And all of this is very precious — like rubies. It is precious because it shows us the good life that is pleasing to God and also makes us truly satisfied.

Don't be fooled into thinking that being wise is just keeping up with the times, thinking like the people around you. The path of true wisdom is liking the things God likes and doing the things God wants you to do . God wants you to be wise, so he is ready to help you to be wise; to become more like Jesus - the wisest person who ever lived. That really is precious.

Prayer

Dear Lord, give me the wisdom that is from above, pure, peaceable, gentle and open to reason (James 3:15). Amen.